AAP: 'Screen-Free' Environment Best for Toddlers

BOSTON -- Babies and toddlers should learn and get their entertainment from play, not from TV screens, computer displays, or video games, according to a new policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Reaffirming its longstanding support for a "screen-free" environment for children younger than 2, the AAP encourages parents to play with toddlers whenever possible and to provide opportunities for supervised independent play when direct engagement with a child is not possible.

When parents do allow media exposure, they should set strict time limits, keeping in mind that the AAP discourages media use by children before age 2.

"In today's 'achievement culture,' the best thing you can do for your young child is to give her a chance to have unstructured play -- with you and independently," Austin, Texas, pediatrician Ari Brown, MD, a member of the AAP council on communications and media, said in a statement and at a press briefing here during the AAP annual meeting.

"Children need this in order to figure out how the world works."

Published in the November issue of Pediatrics, the policy statement updates a 1999 statement that addressed only TV exposure by children younger than 2.

The basis for the statement came from the communication and media council's examination of two questions:

Do video and television have educational value for children younger than 2?

Are children of that age harmed in any way by watching TV or videos?

The search for answers produced several key findings:

Evidence does not support the educational value of video programs, even those marketed as educational.

Unstructured play time facilitates development by encouraging toddlers to learn to think creatively, solve problems, and develop reasoning and motor skills.

Children learn best from interaction with humans.

Children learn more from live presentations than from TV or videos, even when parents watch with a child.

Parents' television viewing habits can distract from play time and create background noise that can interfere with a child's learning.

Television viewing at bedtime can lead to poor sleep habits and irregular sleep schedules.

Heavy media exposure by young children is associated with delayed language development.

The policy statement has recommendations for physicians, parents, and industry.

Physicians should discuss with parents the AAP position of discouraging media exposure by children younger than 2, the concept of setting media limits, the importance of unstructured play to a child's cognitive and motor development, and the value of reading to children to foster cognitive and language development.

Recommendations for parents cover the same issues as those for physicians, with the addition of a statement discouraging parents from putting a TV in a child's bedroom. Recent studies have shown that almost a third of children have a television in their room by age 3.

The AAP encourages industry to conduct independent research to support claims of the educational benefits of their media products and calls on the Federal Trade Commission to develop more stringent criteria for evaluating the validity of educational claims in product advertising.

Lastly, the academy calls for research to assess the long-term effects of early media exposure on child development and to examine the effects of environmental influences on child development.

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